


The Conditions We've Known

by wakingsparrow



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, Mental Health Issues, Possibly Triggering, Self Confidence Issues, but not really, suicidal like thoughts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-27
Updated: 2015-03-27
Packaged: 2018-03-19 21:04:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3624219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wakingsparrow/pseuds/wakingsparrow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of short Reid-centric vignettes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Conditions We've Known

**Author's Note:**

> These are ideas that aren't going to fit in The Object, Suspect, but also won't go away and let me sleep.
> 
> Please be aware that some people may find the content possibly triggering.
> 
> These are written quickly, very late at night, and likely riddled with errors. So, you know, if you see any, please let me know.

The light from beside the cabinet swirled distorted over head, casting a sharp shadow across Spencer Reid's bath room ceiling. He allowed a few bubbles to trickle up to meet it, causing the contrast of light and dark to dance with each other through the surface of the water.

Everything was warm around him, just a soft drone and a few swishes of water against the porcelain till it was eerily silent again.

 

_Am I the only one?_

 

Reid felt the telltale burn in his lungs start, the organs beginning to ache and protest from lack of air. His arms floated still by his sides in the undisturbed water of the tub. It felt almost unreal. He numbly pressed his fingers to his sternum, feeling his heart pulse between his ribs to the pads of his thumbs, matching the all encompassing sound surging in his ears. He tried to let his mind go blank, gears and chain loops whirring down slowly, clanking of his old haunted memories rattling around till they gathered at the back of his mind, no longer entertained.

_Quiet._

 

He felt his diaphragm flutter nervously in his stomach, a part of his whole, a soldier starting to question the orders of his superior. His adam's apple bobbed uselessly in his throat, working for the nonexistent air, tightening around nothing but salvia.

_I need to be quiet._

His pulse quickened each thump by a fraction of a beat and he let a few more blurbs of air up to the ceiling, his lungs relieved just slightly by the change in capacity, the burning subsiding only for a few seconds.

Their aching nearly doubled as time crawled by, hunger for oxygen now only worse.

 _That's what you get for being hopeful,_ he ineffectually chided  his alarmed body. Nevertheless, he released more air. He was close to his breaking point.

_Am I it?_

Thud thud. Thud thud. Thud thud, answered his heart.

He imagined he could feel the tingling of areas of his brain, thalamus, amygdala, sensory cortex, hypothalamus,  as they processed the threat of drowning - flooded chemicals out to activate his fight or flight response. Maybe he _could_ feel it, he thought hazily.

Thudthudthudthud

His lungs were desperately fighting to urge to give in, to breathe deep into the waters and send him sinking into darkness, only to fill their basic need to alter their currently withered condition.

_Am I still the only voice in my head?_

 

He let the little remaining air out in a whoosh, staring up at the rippling ceiling above, red creeping around the corners of his vision from the onset of petechia.

THUDTHUDTHUDTHUD

Reid bolted up suddenly, hands fumbling for the sides of the bathtub clumsily, barely functioning under the strain of nearly passing out.

His lungs rattled to life and he gasped for air desperately between the rivulets of water streaming down from his wet plastered hair.

His body shuttered angrily in protest at Reid - at his  cruel method of soothing his terror of schizophrenia - at his physical self destruction in the need to preserve his mental stability. He tugged out the stopper from the drain, folded his thin arms against his cooling chest, and stared down at his pale pruning toes as the water around him slowly receded.

 

_It's just me._

_For now._

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Yes? No?
> 
> Okay, brain, let me sleep now. Ha.


End file.
